Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Country Gal by Vanita Blundell 2-21-06

Country Gal by Vanita Blundell 2-21-06
Have you ever thought about trash? I say that we have way too much. You know when you drive by other peoples homes and everything is just perfect. No trash-no junk lying around, no signs of pets, or anything out of place. And to top it off the inside of their homes are just as flawless. I wonder if any of those people sleep. I guess I am just a slob. There are certainly more ambitious people than me. But what I want to know are they happy? I know they must be exhausted, and when I get that tired I am cranky. So do you think that neat and tidy folks are miserable? There must be a down side to perfection.
The one reason that I like snow is that it is the one time that the outside of my house is just as pretty as it is anywhere else. It is like when my Granddad Cary would put on wallpaper, he would say that new wallpaper covers a multitude of sins. That is how I feel about a nice DEEP snow. I just do not know how to keep ahead of garbage. I cannot believe how much there is. Everything that you do creates trash.
I can remember that my grandma would wash and rewash her foil, plastic bags, even bread sacks. She had a miniature clothesline over her kitchen sink, after she washed her dishes she would recycle her way. She had a use for almost anything and everything. She did not have the garbage that we have today. But the garbage they did have, they burned. We are not suppose to burn our trash now, especially since it is so dry, but we use to burn everything. Most of us had places where we would dump our trash barrels or just something that would not burn.
That was the first time I can remember driving. It was Virgil’s job to haul our burned out trash barrels off. He would let me go with him and, if I remember correctly, we did not have a driver’s door on the pick-up and I do not think that the floorboard was much better, so I sat in his lap and he would let me steer the pick-up. Virgil was a great brother; we had a lot of fun together.
It was exciting to go through your old trash piles or someone else’s. Sometimes you would find something that you might want back. If you could find one of those holes now, you might find all kinds of treasures. Some of the treasures you could put on e-bay and sell it for more than it cost you when it was new and in working order.
I can tell you that people will buy anything. Since Jennifer has been here she has shown me the fun of the internet. We were just looking around the net and she wanted to know what kind of cats you can buy. We found Bengal cats. They are small domesticated Tigers. The thing that got me was the price. Those silly cats were selling from $1,200 to $12,000. I think we are all in the wrong business.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Country Gal by Vanita Blundell 2-07-06
Sunday evening Jennifer and I had decided to watch the Super Bowl. It is not because we like football it is because we like the commercials and the half time show. We have not watched one game on TV all season long so we were not excited about the game itself just what would come with it. In the future, I would not recommend this type of approach. It makes the football game last forever and it just does not work. We thought the commercials were sadly lacking and were not up to Super Bowl standards. We did like the Fed Ex cave man the best. We have been told that we have a sadistic sense of humor, which is probably true, since in the commercial the caveman was squished by a dinosaur. We thought the half-time show might be good after all, it was the Rolling Stones. I thought they looked so old, I just kind of felt sorry for them. I should not be critical of them since Mick Jagger said that they could have sung at the first Super Bowl 40 years ago. Not many bands are still together after 40 years. Jennifer has gotten me hooked on watching Grey’s Anatomy and it was continued which really depressed us so our Sunday evening was a little disappointing.
Jim came home at end of Super Bowl, he and his brother, John, had gone to Tulsa to see their mom. Donna is taking radiation treatments for the next 5 weeks.
It is that time of year again. Skunk season. I guess every farm has its problems. When I was growing up we had rattlesnakes but that was about it. Here we have wasps, bumblebees, grasshoppers, skunks and raccoons. I am not trying to tell you that we did not have these where I grew up but, as I remember not in excess. I have an excess of these varmints. The bumblebees worry me, as I am allergic to them. I think that I have every kind of wasp or mud dauber there is. However, the skunks are something else entirely. The skunks are so very busy and our dogs are so very stinky. I would like to know why my dogs chase the skunks to the house and corner them against the house, and annoy them so they will spray and smell up the entire house. I have tried to explain it to the dogs that you chase the varmints AWAY from the house not towards the house. Once I went to leave the house and they had a skunk trapped at the front door. That was just great. Our dog, Mutt, who has helped in the skunk department is getting old and just gets things stirred up. However, I have to remember I am not as good as I once was (I think there is a song for that) so I should be happy that he is trying to teach the new dog how to handle those smelly little creatures. So far, the skunks are 4 and the dogs are 0. I think we might need reinforcements.
Country Gal by Vanita Blundell 2-14-06
I have come an important conclusion. I should not have a more than 11 cows in one pasture, absolutely no more than 30. I have found that I have a terrible time counting. It gets very frustrating I count my cows and thinking that I have one missing, so I drive all over the pasture looking for one stretched out and can not find anything. This gets exasperating and with the price of gas it is expensive, then I go back to the herd and count again and find that they are all there. I would like to think that while I went off to look for the straggler she came in behind me. Or as I am counting I am looking out the window that will not go down, while not running over the baby calves who just love to get in front of me, while trying figure out if there is one or more cows behind the bull that stands in the most difficult position. Sometimes I think that Dad was right about those devils sitting on the fence posts. I am not a multi-purpose gal. I have also learned that is essential to string the feed in one line, when you feed in two or three lines the cows are inconsiderate and will not stay in one line, no, they move all around.
I have a framed picture that was Jim’s dads, it was an old calendar, it is entitled ‘Short Cut’. It is a cowboy on horseback counting the Hereford cows going out a pasture gate. The cows are just pouring out and the dirt is flying, but behind him the fence is down and there are cows spilling out the hole, so his count will not be correct.
Sometimes when I look at it, I think that is just about the way life goes. Even when you are doing the best you can and what needs to be done, nothing is for certain. One time my mom asked Keith Marsh if he felt secure with his job. He told her that the only thing that he was secure in was the Lord.
Other times I remember that Dad liked this picture. He thought it looked like Jims dad, Vernon, Dad would talk to the picture and say, “Vernon, your count will be off”. Then he would just laugh.
When we worked cattle for the other ranchers you knew that the day was almost over when we took the cows back to pasture and two cowboys would get on each side of the gate, we would slow the herd down as they wanted to get an accurate count as to what went back in. It was great when both of them got the same number. I was always glad to be in the back and not the counter. I have one neighbor that is gifted with counting. He gets a perfect tally almost every time. Sometimes I think it might be easier to count their feet and divide by 4.